Eggs represent a food product distributed and consumed in large quantities. For many of the same reasons making them desirable food stuffs, eggs also present a unique safety risk. Eggs (most commonly chicken eggs) contain nutrients which can support the growth of dangerous bacteria, when contaminated.
Eggs are a perishable item susceptible to spoilage, as well. To address the concern about spoilage—i.e., whether the egg is fresh—egg packages typically (and often by law or regulation) have expiration dates marked on them. However, eggs may be stored for days or even weeks before being sold at retail. Expiration dates, (a term encompassing such variations as “sell by” and “best if used by” dates) thus may not convey to a consumer or user how “old” an egg truly is. Many consumers, moreover, move eggs from their packages into special receptacles in their refrigerators. In this fashion, additionally, eggs from multiple cartons may come to be intermingled, usually indistinguishably. When these things are done, the consumer is no longer able to evaluate the expiration date of individual eggs prior to using them.
To reduce the chance of a consumer being sold a spoiled egg, certain governmental bodies in the United States and elsewhere, e.g., the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and various state governments, currently do not allow retailers to “repack” eggs, i.e., to move eggs from one package to another. This restriction, unfortunately, can result in tremendous waste. For example, whenever the integrity of even a single egg in a package in the hands of a retailer is compromised (e.g., is broken), the entire package of eggs must be discarded.
Not only is this wasteful of otherwise good eggs, but also of the resources used to produce those eggs. Eggs typically undergo a great deal of processing before they are ready to be sold to the consuming public. In many circumstances, for example, eggs pass through several processing stations at which they are washed, candled, weighed, graded, and packed into packages (e.g., cartons, crates, or other commercially distributed containers). Examples of such processing stations and mechanisms for conveying eggs from station to station are described, for instance, in the following U.S. patents assigned to Diamond Automations, Inc.: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,189,898; 4,195,736; 4,505,373; 4,519,494; 4,519,505; 4,569,444; 4,750,316; 5,321,491; and 6,056,341, the entire contents of each of which are incorporated herein by reference. It is not uncommon for a facility in which these stations operate to output about one million eggs in a single day. Accordingly, to be commercially acceptable, the throughput of the stations needs to be quite high, with some stations typically processing on the order of 20,000 eggs per hour.
When contamination (and possibly spoilage) of eggs is discovered, therefore, not only is it likely that the number of persons made ill—or worse—will be quite large, but also that enormous numbers of eggs must be recalled and destroyed. Many of those eggs will not have been contaminated and will have to be destroyed—at considerable financial loss—because there is no way to isolate the bad eggs from the total population of eggs from a suspect source.
Several techniques for marking individual eggs with expiration dates and the like have been proposed. One such approach is to use vegetable dyes or other water-soluble ink products to mark eggs. Such products, however, have a tendency to leak into the interior of eggs and can result in undesirable ink spots within them. The tendency of such products to wash off or fade also means that such markings are susceptible to tampering and even unintentional loss of integrity (e.g., dripping and smearing from condensation and handling), and has generally limited their acceptance.
It is also known to use lasers to mark indicia onto perishable products for the purpose of tracking their pedigree and/or integrity (e.g., using date codes and/or traceability codes), as well as for allowing textual or graphical advertising messages to be disseminated via such products. An example of a system for laser marking such information on hen eggs is described, for example, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/725,099, Publication No. 2008/0223834 (“the '834 Publication”), published on Sep. 18, 2008. The disclosure of the '834 Publication is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. Additional laser marking apparatus and methods are disclosed in, for example, U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/690,859, 12/690,872, 12/690,876, 12/690,886, 12/690,890, 12/690,896, and 12/690,898, all filed Jan. 20, 2010, each titled “Systems And Methods For Processing Eggs” and hereby incorporated by reference herein; and in PCT Application No. PCT/US2011/021680, Pub. No. WO2011/091011 (the '011 Publication), which claims priority to these seven applications and is also incorporated by reference.
To use such a laser marking system to advantage, eggs preferably should be oriented in a predetermined fashion in order to facilitate focusing the laser beam, placing the markings uniformly on the eggs in a package and assuring that sufficient egg surface is exposed to the laser beam so that the entire intended marking can be applied. To facilitate achievement of such goals, the '011 Publication discloses use of a mechanical orienter apparatus which helps position eggs in a container prior to being exposed to the laser beam.
While the mechanical orienter succeeds in desirably arranging the eggs for laser marking, it does nothing to maintain the positions of the eggs in their containers thereafter. As a result, in shipment and handling, eggs may tilt, twist (spin) and otherwise move within their containers and when a purchaser opens the container, the uniform arrangement of the eggs at the time of marking will not have been maintained. Due to such movements, some of the markings (e.g., freshness date and traceability information) thus may not be readily visible to the purchaser simply by opening the container. Further, such movement may contribute to breakage of some eggs.
Such movements, moreover, may induce the consumer to touch, spin and/or remove and replace the eggs in the carton, for the purpose of moving the egg back into its original forward-facing position, so the dates and traceability codes can be more easily read by the consumer, This touching and handling activity increases the risk of spreading disease organisms from hand to egg and from egg to hand, and then from hand to grocery wagon handle and other products in the supermarket. It also increases the risk of breakage—the more each egg is handled, the more eggs will break as a result of such handling.
It would be desirable in order to promote the readability of every egg when a purchaser opens a container of eggs, and to reduce movement and handling that might induce breakage and/or spread germs (especially in the supermarket), to somehow maintain eggs in their uniform arrangement from the time of marking until purchase. Or at least to do so more nearly than prior containers assure.